Episode #219 – Abba Father

(M) For a couple of days now I’ve been kind of lost and waiting, and knowing something was stirring, but feeling completely, you know, not in touch with it. But this morning I think the Lord brought it, and I hope I never recover. He said… I’ll go to August 9th, of Oswald Chambers “Utmost For His Highest”, and this first statement has, has just pierced me. “When the Son of God prays, He has only one consciousness, and that consciousness is of His Father.” You know I’ve told at different times that experiences in this earthen vessel of Jesus’ responding to the Father within me, and it’s the most awesome experience. It’s way beyond… It’s not about me at all, it’s about the Son and the Father communing together, and I would love to live in the awareness of that communication and that relationship, because it is the most incredible experience of God, to experience the Father-Son relationship. But then he says, “In ordinary life is the prayer of God’s eternal Son to His Father being prayed in me.” (J) Hmmm. (M) “In that day you shall ask in My Name”, and in My Name means in the very Being of Christ; it’s in His thought, His heart, His word, His purpose dwelling within you. That’s ‘in His Name’. It’s Him. I bring Him to the Father. Whatever He asks the Father will be answered. And so the process you’re talking about is leaving the concept of my idea of myself, which is ‘slave’, and my idea of God, which is ‘slave-master’. So, I didn’t expect you to go there, it’s absolutely brilliant of the Spirit. And that is a process, it’s learning that He is this lovely, wonderful, glorious Father, Who has all to give, and Who is the Companion of our deepest, of our deepest need. I looked in the book of John this morning, because that’s where I was looking at the Father issue, and there are over a hundred and twenty mentions of the Father in the book of John. The book of Mark has only three. (J) Hmm, wow. (M) And the Matthew has somewhere less than ninety. The book of Luke, I don’t remember what that had; wasn’t that many, forty-five I think. But the book of John… We think that John the beloved, his book is about Jesus, but it’s really… he has gone into, by love, he has gone into this incredible identity of the Father, and of Jesus’ relationship with His Father. What he reveals is Jesus relationship with His Father. It’s not revealed that way in any other gospel; that is the purpose of the book of John. So, I was remembering a point some years ago when I wept and said, “I have an Abba, I have an Abba.” It was an incredible experience, and after that I did a lot of tapings. I don’t remember; one was “The Real Father” about the prodigal’s father. And “The Good Shepherd” I think was about the Fatherhood of God. I did one a long, long time ago, in Alabama at a meeting, conference of numbers of speakers, and I spoke about the Father. So, I went back to look up that verse, it’s in Ro.8:15, “For the Spirit which you have now received is not a spirit of slavery…” See, it addresses that mentality in us. “to put you once more in bondage to fear…” When you are a slave, you have no security. (J) And extreme fear. (M) Extreme fear, and you have to produce. “But you have received the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit producing sonship in the bliss of which we cry, Abba Father! Father!” The other translations do not bring in the bliss, but… Did you notice? (J) Yeah, that was what stuck out when I was reading it this morning, is the bliss. (M) And for me it was a bliss. You know, what I’ve said before in those tapings is that we, all of us are fatherless, in the sense of having a powerful and holy, and absolutely loving father. Nobody had that, and nobody can be that. It’s impossible. There’s a huge void in us. (J) It’s not supposed to be, and if you will bow to the fact that it’s not supposed to be, then that’s when, really, you come through it. (M) Yeah. And so… But before that verse, there’s this interesting verse. “All who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. For the Spirit which you’ve received is not a spirit of slavery.” And what I saw is that to come… Jesus’ purpose for coming was to reveal the Father. That’s what He said to the disciples as they met the last time. And I think Phillip said, “Show us the Father.” He was meaning… And this is the last meeting before His arrest that very night. And He said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known Me, had learned to recognize Me, you would also have known My Father. From now on you know Him and have seen Him” And Phillip said, just show us the Father, and then we’ll know. (Martha and John laugh.) Have I been with you all this time and you haven’t gotten it? You don’t recognize that I have the Father, and I am revealing Him? See, we are so suspicious of God, from the garden, that we don’t really know Who He is. It has to be revealed through the Son. And the Son’s purpose, love and focus, and consciousness, is always on the Father. His love for the Father is beyond anything that can be described or known. His relationship with the Father is one of such absolute joy and love. (J) How did that book the other night say it? About the fact that Jesus had to come in the flesh to gain our focus; you know what I’m talking about? (M) What book? (J) That we were listening to, “The Joy Of Letting Go”. Remember? It was saying… I said what an amazing thought. (M) Tell me in your words what he said. (J) Well, in my words he just, he basically was saying that flesh loves flesh, and so God was willing to come and bring Himself into flesh so that He could lead them to the Father. And He basically embodied flesh so that He could gain the focus of flesh and say, let Me show you the Father. (M) Yes. I do remember. Oswald said… I’m going through Oswald Chambers and looking at the issue of the Father. I’m going through the scriptures, the New Testament, the gospels, and looking at the Father. But Oswald said, “When a soul is united to God by the indwelling Holy Spirit…” See it’s all about the Holy Spirit taking you to this. “That is not the end, the end is that we may be one with the Father as Jesus was.” And I became aware that Jesus… When you connect with Jesus as Savior and indwelling Lord, and then you are submitted to the Holy Spirit, and that is the crucial point, that is the pivot, you will know the Father if you are led of the Spirit. (J) That’s huge, that’s really huge. (M) You will not know the Father if you live a life of serving the Lord, or following Him, but not submitting. (J) I’m kind of on that this morning with someone, and seeing that there is no surrender, there’s…they reserve the right to judge what comes, if it’s for them or not. And because they live that way, it’s a willfulness and there is no surrender. And you just defined what it is, it’s the fact that they’re not Spirit-led, they’re not Spirit-filled because they’re not Spirit-led. (M) Right, yeah. (J) And then there’s, there’s no sonship. (M) Hmhmm. And really surrender to the Spirit is basic to the Christian life. But we are… I read a book recently, and it had tremendous insight, but when I got through I said there’s no need for the Spirit, everything is in a ‘block’, in a ‘name’, and in a category, and so there’s no need for the Holy Spirit. So there is no real anointing there. (J) But what you’re saying is that unless there’s the listening, and the surrender to the Spirit, there is no sonship; you are a bastard. (M) Exactly, you are living as a bastard, unnecessarily. You’re living outside of God’s provision; He has the total provision of the Holy Spirit for us. The Holy Spirit will take us through a path we do not understand; if we have to understand we will not follow the Spirit. But the Spirit will lead us into sonship, and that sonship is the revealing of the Father, and of the fact that He has adopted us as sons, and the spirit within us will cry Abba Father. And I looked up that phrase, Abba Father, and Abba is an Aramaic word. It’s a personal name, Abba is ‘Daddy’ we could say. And it’s a word, this commentary says, “framed by the lips of infants’. It’s an unreasoning trust. But Father is the expression of an intelligent apprehension of the adult. So see what I, what I got out of it is, the infant in me cries ‘Abba, I have a Father, I have a Daddy, I have a precious, loving, tender, compassionate Daddy’, and I live in His love. But as an adult I have to know Him as Father, because what I need as an adult is safety and provision. And if I have safety and provision in the Father, I can have no fear.

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